Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/131

 METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 1 1 5

of approach. Although the organization here attempted, if successful, will entirely displace Wundt's correlation of problems after those of psychology, yet the freest use is made throughout of everything in his work that will serve the present purpose.

These notes contain no definition of sociology. The plan is to make plain, if possible, what sort of knowledge about society is yet lacking, and to find in that hiatus the problem of sociology. If we are successful in making out that there is an order of social problem not only unsolved, but unformulated elsewhere, the discovery may indicate where there is room for sociology.

The logic of method is this : Given, first, a reality of which the mind is conscious, and about which the mind proposes questions; to discover, second, what elements are involved in answers to the ques- tions, and to discover, third, by what means the implicit requirements of the questions may be satisfied.

To mark the most general bearings of the social problem, we may begin with the observation that we have before us the task of investi- gating reality. There are but two sides of reality to be studied. We cannot completely separate them if we will. It is impossible to know much about either without learning much about the other. Unless the mind turns from reality to fantasy, it has but this single choice, viz., between studying chiefly the world of things, on the one hand, or chiefly the world of people, on the other. Besides these there is no reality open to our research. To our minds, things have, and always must have, their meaning from their relations to persons. The physical universe may have a quite different meaning to an infinite intelligence, but men have to estimate it in its relation to human conditions. Human wants decide for human minds what is worth knowing about the world of things. A well-balanced conception of the world of people is a necessary condition of the broadest and deepest knowledge of the world of things. The converse of this is also true, viz., a well- balanced conception of the world of things is a necessary condition of the broadest and deepest knowledge of the world of people. All students of men should qualify themselves by much schooling in the sciences of things. But men cannot successfully take a standpoint outside of humanity. Our outlook is the human outlook. Until a very recent date most students of social facts went gaily at their work without thought of a social standpoint. If it were wise to tell the whole truth, I should add that ninety-nine in every hundred students of social facts still cheerfully continue the same unconscious pro-